WWI soldier finally buried after DNA matched great nephew's
Lieutenant James Allan died aged 20, on the first day of the Battle of Loos on Sept 25 1915.
An official report later said the officer, of the 9th Gordon Highlanders, was 'last seen rallying some infantry in a most gallant manner'.
His body lay undiscovered for 108 years until it was found by builders working on a new hospital in Lens, France.
War records and the discovery of buttons from his battalion led researchers to believe the remains could belong to Lt Allan, who came from Edinburgh.
Lt Allan's great nephew Nicholas Allan, 55, was sent a letter from the Ministry of Defence in December 2023, asking him to provide a DNA sample.
He was told he could be one of 14 possible descendants of soldiers killed in the area.
In January, the chef and co-founder of Star Anise cafe, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, was called and told that his DNA was a match and the remains were those of his great-uncle.
He said: 'I was completely blown away. It stopped me in my tracks and it woke me up from the everyday, getting on with your job and worrying about whether I've got enough in the bank to pay the next bill. It took me out, and I went 'wow, I've got roots going back 110 years ago to the First World War'.
'It completely changed my whole outlook in that moment. I was awake to a different relationship to just being a guy running a cafe.'
A letter written by Private George Ferguson and addressed to the fallen officer's parents, dated Jan 1 1916, said he was 'lying on his stomach very peaceful looking' after his death in the trenches.
In Lt Allan's last letter home, to his elder sister Margaret and postmarked Aug 4 1915, he wrote that the 'uselessness' of the war had been impressed upon him and asked his family to send him some matches.
In September this year, 110 years on from his death, Lt Allan will be laid to rest in Lens with full military honours.
To pay tribute to his memory, Nicholas and his younger brother Christopher plan to wear kilts made from one of 16 possible Allan tartans.
Nicholas said: 'I remember as a little 12-year-old, my dad taking me to Edinburgh Castle, to the memorial plaque of those who had passed. He said: 'Look, that's your great-uncle'. I only clocked oh, it's a relative and he died in the Great War. I didn't have the presence of mind as a little boy to ask: 'Oh, who is he?'.
'My grandfather, Nimmo, was 18 when his brother was killed. He survived the war, but never spoke about his elder brother. I think at that time and in that period, people didn't speak about the Great War very much. It was very much a cultural thing. The culture of those times was you just get on with your life, and those who have gone have gone.'
According to the National Army Museum, the Battle of Loos caused 50,000 British casualties, almost double the number of German losses, and was the first time the British Army used gas as a weapon.
Nicholas said: 'Although the Brits outnumbered the Germans, the Germans were far more organised, and they just had very good machine gun positions and just mowed them down.
'They kept on being sent out. It was a classic scenario in the First World War, where these guys were literally sent over the trenches into bloody machine gun fire, it was just kind of nuts.'
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Just as we no longer burn coal without a thought for the consequences, the era of carefree antibiotic use is now firmly in the past. In both cases, the idea that there wouldn't be a reckoning was always an illusion. But as with our slow waking up to the reality of the climate crisis, coming to appreciate the limits of our love affair with antibiotics may ultimately be no bad thing. Liam Shaw is a biologist at the University of Oxford, and author of Dangerous Miracle (Bodley Head). Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (Profile, £11.99) Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them by John S Tregoning (Oneworld, £10.99) Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped our History by Dorothy H Crawford (Oxford, £12.49)
